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Famous Scarce Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Scarce poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous scarce poems. These examples illustrate what a famous scarce poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Wilde, Oscar
...ky foam,
A fair cloth wrought with cunning imagery
Of hounds in chase, a waxen honey-comb
Dripping with oozy gold which scarce the bee
Had ceased from building, a black skin of oil
Meet for the wrestlers, a great boar the fierce and white-tusked
spoil

Stolen from Artemis that jealous maid
To please Athena, and the dappled hide
Of a tall stag who in some mountain glade
Had met the shaft; and then the herald cried,
And from the pillared precinct one by one
Went the glad Greeks...Read more of this...



by Keats, John
...r moon had Phoebe wandered;
And many else were free to roam abroad,
But for the main, here found they covert drear.
Scarce images of life, one here, one there,
Lay vast and edgeways; like a dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November, and their chancel vault,
The Heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.
Each one kept shroud, nor to his neighbour gave
Or word, or look, or action of despair.
Creu...Read more of this...

by Alighieri, Dante
...life, a spotted pard except, 
 That yawning rose, and stretched, and purred and leapt 
 So closely round my feet, that scarce I kept 
 The course I would. 
 That sleek and lovely thing, 
 The broadening light, the breath of morn and spring, 
 The sun, that with his stars in Aries lay, 
 As when Divine Love on Creation's day 
 First gave these fair things motion, all at one 
 Made lightsome hope; but lightsome hope was none 
 When down the slope there came with lifted hea...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...t Lara was not there; 
Nor sent, nor came he, till conjecture grew 
Cold in the many, anxious in the few. 
His hall scarce echoes with his wonted name, 
His portrait darkens in its fading frame, 
Another chief consoled his destined bride, 
The young forgot him, and the old had died; 
"Yet doth he live!" exclaims the impatient heir, 
And sighs for sables which he must not wear. 
A hundred scutcheons deck with gloomy grace 
The Laras' last and longest dwelling-place; 
B...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...ils, with regard 
Of what we are and where, dismissing quite 
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise." 
 He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled 
Th' assembly as when hollow rocks retain 
The sound of blustering winds, which all night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by chance 
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay 
After the tempest. Such applause was heard 
As Mammon ended, and his sentence p...Read more of this...



by Milton, John
...But first, from under shady arborous roof 
Soon as they forth were come to open sight 
Of day-spring, and the sun, who, scarce up-risen, 
With wheels yet hovering o'er the ocean-brim, 
Shot parallel to the earth his dewy ray, 
Discovering in wide landskip all the east 
Of Paradise and Eden's happy plains, 
Lowly they bowed adoring, and began 
Their orisons, each morning duly paid 
In various style; for neither various style 
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise 
Their Maker...Read more of this...

by Milton, John
...is fair tree amidst 
The garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat 
Thereof, nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die. 
She scarce had said, though brief, when now more bold 
The Tempter, but with show of zeal and love 
To Man, and indignation at his wrong, 
New part puts on; and, as to passion moved, 
Fluctuates disturbed, yet comely and in act 
Raised, as of some great matter to begin. 
As when of old some orator renowned, 
In Athens or free Rome, where eloquence 
Flourishe...Read more of this...

by Wilde, Oscar
...d Arcady;
Yet back to thee returns my perfect love,
As to its forest-nest the evening dove.

O poet's city! one who scarce has seen
Some twenty summers cast their doublets green
For Autumn's livery, would seek in vain
To wake his lyre to sing a louder strain,
Or tell thy days of glory; - poor indeed
Is the low murmur of the shepherd's reed,
Where the loud clarion's blast should shake the sky,
And flame across the heavens! and to try
Such lofty themes were folly: yet I kno...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nded, forth they came and paced the shore,
Ran in and out the long sea-framing caves,
Drank the large air, and saw, but scarce believed
(The sootflake of so many a summer still
Clung to their fancies) that they saw, the sea.
So now on sand they walk'd, and now on cliff,
Lingering about the thymy promontories,
Till all the sails were darken'd in the west,
And rosed in the east: then homeward and to bed:
Where she, who kept a tender Christian hope
Haunting a holy text, and ...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...yward boy 
Will one day work me more annoy: 
I never loved him from his birth, 
And — but his arm is little worth, 
And scarcely in the chase could cope 
With timid fawn or antelope, 
Far less would venture into strife 
Where man contends for fame and life — 
I would not trust that look or tone: 
No — nor the blood so near my own. 

That blood — he hath not heard — no more — 
I'll watch him closer than before. 
He is an Arab to my sight, [5] 
Or Christian crouching in...Read more of this...

by Bridges, Robert Seymour
...strive with the pains
Of one who spends his strength to rule his nerve,
--Even as a painter breathlessly who stains
His scarcely moving hand lest it should swerve--
Behold me, now that I have cast my chains,
Master of the art which for thy sake I serve.


2
For thou art mine: and now I am ashamed
To have uséd means to win so pure acquist,
And of my trembling fear that might have misst
Thro' very care the gold at which I aim'd;
And am as happy but to hear thee named,
As ar...Read more of this...

by Tennyson, Alfred Lord
...nly one man of an exceeding age. 
"Where is that goodly company," said I, 
"That so cried out upon me?" and he had 
Scarce any voice to answer, and yet gasped, 
"Whence and what art thou?" and even as he spoke 
Fell into dust, and disappeared, and I 
Was left alone once more, and cried in grief, 
"Lo, if I find the Holy Grail itself 
And touch it, it will crumble into dust." 

`And thence I dropt into a lowly vale, 
Low as the hill was high, and where the vale 
Was lo...Read more of this...

by Wordsworth, William
...; But wherefore set upon a saddle  Him whom she loves, her idiot boy?   There's scarce a soul that's out of bed;  Good Betty put him down again;  His lips with joy they burr at you,  But, Betty! what has he to do  With stirrup, saddle, or with rein?   The world will say 'tis very idle,  Bethink you of the time of night;  There's not ...Read more of this...

by Scott, Sir Walter
...nce more! how rude soe'er the hand
        That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray;
     O, wake once more! though scarce my skill command
        Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay:
     Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,
        And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,
     Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,
        The wizard note has not been touched in vain.
     Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake again!
     I.

     The stag ...Read more of this...

by Poe, Edgar Allan
...I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, 
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, 
That I scarce was sure I heard you"¡ªhere I opened wide the door:¡ª 
Darkness there and nothing more. 

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, 25 
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; 
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, 
And the only word there spoken was the whispere...Read more of this...

by Thomson, James
...s.

NOW, solitary, and in pensive Guise, 
Oft, let me wander o'er the russet Mead,
Or thro' the pining Grove; where scarce is heard
One dying Strain, to chear the Woodman's Toil:
Sad Philomel, perchance, pours forth her Plaint,
Far, thro' the withering Copse. Mean while, the Leaves, 
That, late, the Forest clad with lively Green,
Nipt by the drizzly Night, and Sallow-hu'd,
Fall, wavering, thro' the Air; or shower amain,
Urg'd by the Breeze, that sobs amid the Boughs.<...Read more of this...

by Shelley, Percy Bysshe
...ns of good; and for despair
I half disdained mine eye's desire to fill
With the spent vision of the times that were
And scarce have ceased to be . . . "Dost thou behold,"
Said then my guide, "those spoilers spoiled, Voltaire,
"Frederic, & Kant, Catherine, & Leopold,
Chained hoary anarch, demagogue & sage
Whose name the fresh world thinks already old--
"For in the battle Life & they did wage
She remained conqueror--I was overcome
By my own heart alone, which neithe...Read more of this...

by Byron, George (Lord)
...felt 
A tingling to the top of every feather, 
And form'd a circle like Orion's belt 
Around their poor old charge; who scarce knew whither 
His guards had led him, though they gently dealt 
With royal manes (for by many stories, 
And true, we learn the angels all are Tories.) 

XXVII 

As things were in this posture, the gate flew 
Asunder, and the flashing of its hinges 
Flung over space an universal hue 
Of many-colour'd flame, until its tinges 
Reach'd even our speck ...Read more of this...

by Schiller, Friedrich von
...beauteous view? A strange spirit
Over the still-stranger plain spreads itself quickly afar--
Coyly separates now, what scarce had lovingly mingled,
And 'tis the like that alone joins itself on to the like.
Orders I see depicted; the haughty tribes of the poplars
Marshalled in regular pomp, stately and beauteous appear.
All gives token of rule and choice, and all has its meaning,--
'Tis this uniform plan points out the Ruler to me.
Brightly the glittering domes in...Read more of this...

by Walker, Alice
...a-shaped stones
are all as rare.


This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce. ...Read more of this...

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